I've been divorced twice. I have 2 children by birth, 3 by marriage and countless by "adoption". And by adoption I mean friends of my 2 children that call me mom. I'm not a perfect parent. I never have claimed to be perfect. My parenting style was trial and error, with lots of errors.
I believe that I raised two responsible, caring adults. I am often reminded by others, that while I'm not perfect, my children, now adults are making all the right decisions. Which has lead us to the most unique situation I have ever run into, and am now a part of a very non traditional family.
My children both have the same father. He and I divorced when my daughter was almost 5 yrs old. He went on to remarry, and have another child. He and his new family moved out of state, and about a year later, he was murdered by his wife. She is now serving 17 years in prison for second degree murder. I've never kept this a secret, but it's not something I have shared openly until now. I think you understand my reluctance to share our story, especially with people that I don't know. You see, his wife killed him, after taking her 2 young children to daycare, returning home. Walking down the road to her father's home, taking his registered legal gun, walking back to the home she shared with my ex-husband, and shot him while he slept in his bed. She then walked back to her father's home, put the gun back from where she had taken it, walked back to her home, and called the police. She claimed that she came home to find the back door open, and assumed it was her husband, and he had not shut the door all the way after waking up. She went into the bedroom,expecting to find him awake, only to see blood all up the wall, and covering the bed, and him. I was questioned by the TBI, via phone. Wanting to know if I had any witnesses to my being home at the time of the murder. Well of course I had my entire family, as I was living with my parents, who were helping me in taking care of my kids. I also had the daycare that I took my children to in the mornings before school, and I was not only at work, but on time. The day before I had gone to the store, and had proof of my visit there in the late afternoon. I also pointed out to the detective that he could pull the phone records for their home and find that I had talked to my ex-husband at length the day before, as he had called my son to say happy birthday, and to apologize to me for his affair. There's more to that story, but I need to move on to the topic of this blog, so that will have to wait for another day.
Fast forward to June of 2012. My daughter, who is in touch with her half sister, now living with their Aunt and Uncle in Arizona, and is being told that her sister is being abused. The state of Arizona is willing to back my daughter having custody of her sister, and whether or not she was actually abused, the Aunt and Uncle are at their wits end in dealing with this girl, so they ship her to my daughter, with custody papers and basically say good riddance.
While my children where still teenagers, I had gotten them counseling. Not only did they have to deal with their father's death, but the suicide of my brother. My daughter was also dealing with 4 friends, over 4 years that also died by suicide. She developed a medical condition that baffled the doctors until someone got the bright idea to remove her gallbladder. I do believe that my children are as "normal" as they are because I made them see a therapist at least twice a month. I knew that even though they seemed "normal" that everything (and I've left a lot of it out) they went thru was more than I as and adult could deal with, much less their teenage minds to deal with.
My daughter's sister (let's call her Sue, just to give her a name for this) Sue, also went to a therapist, but admits that she didn't talk to the therapist, after she got in trouble with her Aunt for things she told that person. Big breach of sue's trust, and understandably she doesn't trust most adults. How could she with all that she's been thru. And I haven't begun to tell you everything she's endured in her 16 years. Lets be clear, none of what she has gone thru in any way excuses what you are about to read.
Sue, is quite the drama queen. Seriously I thought my daughter had cornered that market when she was that age, but alas, I'm learning that I had it quite easy with my daughter. I had the typical teenage girl issues to deal with. Know it all, on the phone all the time, boys, grades.... You get the point. My daughter was no picnic, but no where near Sue when it comes to drama.
Sue is taking honors classes in school. Yet it's a battle every day for us to get her to put the required amount of work into these classes. As we have explained to her, honor's classes should have twice the amount of work put into them to get A's and B's in the class. Sue feels she can just do the minimum work, and pass, and it's ok. My daughter has literally had to ask me to explain to this child that honors classes mean you work twice as hard as what you would for a non honors class. We still have to tell her to do her homework, how to study for a test, and there are days that she doesn't want to put the work into the class and will try to get one of us to give her the answers so that she doesn't have to read or look into it herself.
Sue also has a major attitude issue. Now this doesn't surprise me. Sue was given to my former in-laws when she was about 2 or 3, and raised by them for years. My former mother in law died, leaving her with my former father in law. Who never should have been raising her, for many many reasons. I won't go into them, I don't have the need to put that out in public... Yet..... Basically I can tell you that the two of them had 2 boys that they raised, 2 girls who both died very very young. So they spoiled Sue. Whatever she wanted, she got. They had tried to do this with my daughter, but I put a stopper in that bottle before my daughter was a year old.
Sue's Aunt and Uncle had grown children of their own. I do believe they are actually Grandparents as well. I'm not 100% sure of that, because I didn't really know them when I was part of that family. My husband really didn't care for them at all.
Sue, as I'm sure you have safely guessed by now, has Daddy issues. Let me give you a good example of this. Over the weekend, Sue met 2 classmates at Walmart to do a school project. They had to create a PSA video. So they gathered their materials (I should mention that Sue had my daughter's $300 camera to film this with), and were recording clips of them walking around the store while they did this. They then proceed to ask people the questions they needed answered to make the video. About an hour, maybe an hour and a half later, she calls my daughter and tells her they are done, and she's ready to be picked up. Off to Walmart go my daughter and her boyfriend (who is also living in home), not only to pick her up, but to get a few things we need here.
They get back home, unpack the items, and do what ever else they need to do. My daughter's boyfriend leaves for work, and my daughter is helping Sue gather what she needs to edit this video. Now mind you, Sue has had every piece of electronic equipment taken away from her, for various reasons. She is basically grounded from technology because she can't do what she's expected to do at 16. She has chores that are often done half way. She has epilepsy and has had issues in remembering to take her medication. So my daughter gives her a laptop to use to edit the videos they took, and make the PSA. Sounds pretty basic right? Nope, here is where the drama begins, this week.
One would think that 16 yr old kids really don't want to be doing school work on a Saturday, and that they would go in, get the footage they needed, and get out as quickly as possible. My daughter starts watching the video clips, and finds that this isn't the case. Not only did they not get the footage they needed to get for the assignment, but they quite literally jacked around in Walmart, flirting and being stupid for most of the clips. My daughter, with my complete understanding and sympathy at this point, loses her temper. It is on the footage for everyone to hear, exactly how much screwing around they did. How much a bully Sue comes across in the footage as, and to top it all off, apparently one of the kids didn't like the answer that someone gave about not wanting to be on camera, and when the guy walked away the other student is heard saying "He must be illegal". This causes Sue and the other boy to start laughing. My daughter is not amused by this at all. You see, my kids were raised with the knowledge that you are no better than the next person. You have no right to make fun of, bully or discriminate against anyone. My daughter took that statement as racist, and told Sue that not only was it not funny, but Sue is now in my daughter's mind, a bully and a racist.
I won't bore you with all the details of what was said, or done in the last 24 plus hours. I will tell you that things got so bad that my daughter told Sue : "I feel like a failure of a mom. I am suppose to be raising you, teaching you right from wrong, and yet you can't seem to learn what I teach you. You have made me believe that I shouldn't be a mom, ever". Now my daughter has wanted to be a mom since she was about 5 years old. Maybe younger. She always loved babies, and kids. She was everyone're favorite babysitter when she was younger, and still is to some now. My daughter wanted nothing more than to be a mom, so to hear her say that, quite literally broke my heart. After Sue went to her room, I reminded my daughter that mom's aren't perfect, and that she can't take this personally. That there are many many things that happened to shape her sister the way she is now, and it's going to take a whole lot of time to under do this.
I hope my daughter doesn't give up on being a mom. I don't want her to give up on that idea. Some times, we are given our lot in life to teach us how to be stronger and better than those that came before us. So, here's to a non traditional family, and to one day seeing my daughter give birth to a child, the same way my mother was there when I had her.
There isn't really a point in my blog today, other than I'm sure there are other families out there, and they need to know they aren't the only ones in this situation. They are not alone. We are not alone. Being a mother doesn't always mean giving birth. And being a sister, sometimes has to take a back seat to being a parent.
Til next time.... Maybe I'll tackle my true love, the NFL. I have a lot to say about professional athletes today.
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